**Whew** It's been a long time! I officially took the month of June off. Not intentionally, I just seem to have got sucked into some kind of a temporal vortex. It all started with the stupid poker...

**shakes fist at party poker - I want my life savings and deed to our house back you blood-sucking weasels!!**

Haha, just kidding. Though I did end up taking a bit of a beating there... **ahem**

You'll be glad to hear I invested in a wonderful book called Kill Everyone: Advanced Strategies for No-Limit Hold Em Poker Tournaments & Sit-n-Gos. Next on my reading list? Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments **oh yeah!**

But I digress... So yeah, first it was the poker, then it was my birthday! Bubs gave me a kindle!! So then I spent forever looking up all the free kindle books, cheap kindle books, poker, autism and SPD kindle books. My kindle is stocked. Bring on crashing on a deserted island, cause I'm ready, dammit!

Betty has started cruising too. It all went by so quickly!! One day she was pulling herself up to standing with whatever she could reach, wobbling for a few seconds and then slumping back to the floor. Then she started standing for longer, started dragging her feet towards things while she was standing and now she's getting pretty good at cruising! She's even stood a few times completely by herself for at about 5 seconds before she crashes down on her butt. I found cutest pants for her by the way, but that'll come later, in the "Devil" section... **winks** And though she hasn't started talking yet, she has been pointing at stuff when we look at books together... So that's a positive sign, right? Shared attention and all that? There's no need to worry, there's no need to worry..

We've also been pretty busy going to the occupational therapy appointments, getting together all recommended items for that. I fought and fought the Bubs to put this swing up in the middle of the diner/playroom part of the kitchen, he put it up and it all came crashing down after a couple of days. That was my fault. Not that I sat on it or anything, just that Bubbi had said that we shouldn't put it there because of all these structural (?? **yawn**) reasons, he finally caved and like he said, it didn't work. Now we have all these holes in the ceiling. He said he'd plaster over it, paint it and we'd "never speak of it again" **lol**. Anyhow, he has a place in mind where the swing could go so at least it hasn't been a total waste.

We've had our ABA training!!! I can't tell you how excited I am about finally getting started! And before the actual training we had a few visits from each of the therapists that will be coming so we could all get to know each other. It's funny because the ABA supervisor and each of the two therapists all have children with autism. Anyway, guess I'd better give them all names.

I'll be really original with the supervisor and call her: The Consultant! Then there's Susan and Gina. Why name them after the actresses who played Thelma and Louise? Don't know. But Susan is the more down to earth one. I can imagine her being a tomboy when she was growing up. She's funny, seems to have a really calm, unshakable quality to her and is very no nonsense, yet very warm and affectionate towards Taz. She's tons of fun, reduces him to fits of giggles with her rough play and is very bubbly in her interactions with him. I should really call her Mary Poppins, but no, we'll stick to Susan. Gina is also really nice, I met her first. She's a lot more girly and seems to have an emotional streak to her. When we talk about certain things I can see her eyes misting over and her doing her darnedest not to let it show. She's also very loving and warm, is bright and cheerful and you can tell she really really cares about what she does.

Karen V was right!! I got there in the end!! I feel incredibly lucky to have got such an amazing team together, I'm literally buzzing I'm so excited about about finally starting our ABA program this coming Monday!! **woo** And not a moment too soon either since uhh... Taz has definitely been exhibiting some uhh... Challenging behaviour.... Yeah, let's go with that.. **snort**